


there is a thunder in our hearts

by CloudAtlas



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Gen, On the Run, Role Reversal, Women Being Awesome, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7086247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If I only could</i>
  <br/>
  <i>I'd make a deal with god</i>
  <br/>
  <i>and I'd get him to swap our places.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Parts of an abandoned story where it's the ladies, and not the guys, who are the heroes of the story. Only three of six even halfway worked, and one is getting reworked into something else, so have Betty and Peggy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Betty Ross AKA the Hulk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the only part that really, truly, worked. I love this Betty so much.

Dr Elizabeth Ross had enjoyed marking papers. Or, not _enjoyed_ exactly, but some of the ridiculous answers her students put forward would make her laugh, and she’d lean over the kitchen table and tell Bruce. And Bruce wouldn’t exactly get it – he was a biologist, not a physicist – but he would smile, and sometimes laugh and get her more coffee.

Dr Elizabeth Ross had had a small kitchen. She’d had a cat called Schrodinger (obviously), an office full of textbooks and a boyfriend to come back to in the evenings. The worst things to happen to Dr Elizabeth Ross were the staff room at Culver running out of coffee, the department head being an obnoxious ass and watching deadlines for papers and journal submissions fly past like so many dead leaves.

Betty missed Dr Elizabeth Ross.

Betty was currently in La Ceiba, Honduras, wearing clothes she’d been forced to steal off someone’s washing line. Betty had at least tried to take clothes only from people who looked like they could afford it, but it didn’t make her feel much better. However Honduras, much like the US, had laws about public nudity and Betty had had enough trouble in the past four months than she knew what to do with, so she’d rather not risk more.

Betty hoped Bruce was looking after Schrodinger. On top of everything else, she didn’t want the guilt of the cat starving to death locked up inside her house while Bruce freaked out and continued his attempt to chase her across the globe – something Betty was sure would be easier for him than it was for her. Crossing the globe, that is; Bruce wasn’t currently an ‘international terror suspect’.

She was in La Ceiba hoping to find a man known as Antonio, who forged passports. Since what CNN was calling ‘the Harlem Incident’ she had been on the run, first taking refuge in Canada. But then winter set in and she decided that warmer climates were a must, and also that she needed to get out of the Americas if she had any chance of _not_ feeling as though she had a target painted on her back.

The Harlem Incident was the last time she’d seen Bruce, and on bad days she missed him more than she could cope with. The Harlem Incident was also the last time she’d… transformed. Each day since then counted as a win for her control, and a day further away from obvious signs for the Army – and her father – to follow.

There were, however, huge tests to her control. A man had attacked her in Arkansas as she was making her slow way through the States. There had been trouble crossing the border into Mexico and, if she couldn’t get a passport in Honduras, Betty guessed she’d face more trouble trying to get from Panama into Colombia.

However, Betty was slowly running out of money, and being on the run didn’t make getting more particularly easy.

She had done this before, though. After the initial… incident, Betty had spent about eight months in Brazil, living in the favelas around _São_ Paulo and keeping a low profile as a line worker in a soda factory. It had worked for a while and, though all she had there was a shack and a dog who _didn’t_ answer to the name Darwin, she had been – not happy exactly, but all right. But in the end, her profile hadn’t been low enough and it hadn’t turned out well for… well, anybody.

Really she was just hoping that her money would last long enough for her to buy a passport and a ticket to India or China. It would be much easier to hide in a country of over a billion souls and people wouldn’t expect her to leave the Americas. It was too risky.

Antonio was a small, weaselly looking man with a weak chin and a ponytail. He didn’t look too impressed by Betty, but he didn’t recognise her either, and that was all she cared about.

“It cost you cincuenta dólares,” was the first thing he said to her.

Betty’s Spanish was terrible, and it took her a while to work out he was saying it was fifty dollars.

“Sí, sí, bueno,” she replied hurriedly, mentally adjusting her budget for her flight.

“Pay now. Pasaporte mañana.”

It was the afternoon now, so he must mean tomorrow.

“Sí,” Betty agreed again.

“Come. Fotografía.”

Betty followed him into the back room of his ‘office’. There were a couple of photography lamps, a stool and a white sheet pinned to the back wall, as well as a table with jury rigged forgery equipment that Betty couldn’t even guess the uses of.

“País?”

“Huh?” Betty replied, confused.

“País? Nacionalidad?”

“Oh! Um… Canadian? Canada?”

“Bueno. Información?  Nombre? Fecha de nacimiento?”

“Um... Jennifer Walters. And um, here. Aquí,” and Betty passed him a piece of paper with the few details she’d thought up, leaving blanks for those he could choose himself. The birthday was a mixture between Bruce and her mother; her mother’s day and month, Bruce’s year.

“Bueno,” he said again, then gestured towards the stool.

All in all, Betty was in Antonio’s ‘office’ for less than fifteen minutes, after which Betty wandered around La Ceiba. As one would expect from a place where it was relatively easy to get a passport forged, La Ceiba looked as though it had seen better days. Betty mostly spent her time on the beach with a notebook and a pencil stub – both found on the floor on the outskirts of Guatemala City – budgeting furiously; money for a chicken bus to San Pedro Sula, money for flights, money for internet access to _check_ flights, money for some food and a place to stay. Money for a bit of a clean-up so she didn’t inflict four months of accumulated grime on two hundred or so people at thirty thousand feet for an excess of thirty hours.

Betty realised she might have to sell her necklace.

Betty refused to sell her necklace.

It was a fluke really. Bruce had given her a necklace one anniversary. Nothing fancy, just a chain with a ball charm on it. The only unusual thing about it was that it was so long she could tuck it under the centre strap of her bra, which turned out to be blessing given how much her neck expanded when she… transformed. She’d lost her watch, her rings, even her glasses, but her necklace was long enough that even the transformation couldn’t damage it. She was damned if she was going to lose it now.

No, she would just have to find another way.

Betty got a meal and a small amount of cash by offering to wait tables in a small road-side café until three in the morning. It was warm enough to sleep on the beach. In the morning, Betty paid Antonio for a passport so realistic looking Betty felt hopeful for the first time in days.

“Where you going?” asked Antonio.

“India,” replied Betty, before gathering up her small canvas bag containing all her worldly possessions, and leaving for the bus terminal.


	2. Peggy Carter AKA Captain Carter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abandoned because how do you, realistically, make a British woman Captain America?

Peggy had hoped that Steve would not find her. In fact, she’d chosen this bar for that particular reason. She knew London better than him after all, and she had – wrongly apparently – assumed that, after everything the troops had been saying about Soho, Steve would not venture into that part of the city. But here he was, and now Peggy had to face the man whose best friend she’d failed to save.

Competence counted for a lot of things Peggy guessed, swirling the whiskey in her tumbler. It managed to outweigh her gender in a world frequently followed in speeches by the words ‘of men’ and, in this specific case, had convinced a man who had absolutely no ties to her beyond the belief of a friend to follow her to his death.

Peggy had wanted to do some good during this time of war. This wasn’t really what she’d had in mind.

Steve sat down in the chair in front of her, wheezing slightly, but Peggy couldn’t meet his eyes. Instead she looked at the rim of her glass.

“I’m sorry,” she forced out.

Steve’s breath hitched, and he made a strangled sound before replying in a choked whisper, “So am I.”

“I should have – I… I couldn’t. He…” Peggy couldn’t get the words out. “I – couldn’t reach. I should have – _tried_ , I –”

She couldn’t raise her eyes to look at him because she was terrified to see the pain – the _blame_ – in the eyes of one of the two people who had believed unconditionally that she could do this.

 

Steve Rogers had been picked by Dr Erskine to be among the first to receive his super soldier serum. Though he was completely unfit for military service, Erskine had wrangled it so he was brought with a regiment of American soldiers from the US to one of the Allied bases outside London.

Peggy’s introduction to Steve Rogers was watching him attempt to lift himself off the ground doing press-ups. It wasn’t the most encouraging of first meetings, but even then, Peggy could see what Erskine meant.

 

“Don’t,” Steve forced out. “Don’t apologise. This isn’t your fault.”

“How can you say – ”

“ _Don’t_ , Peggy.”

Peggy could hear the pain in his voice, could see the strain on his face and the unshed tears in his eyes. Peggy closed her mouth.

 

Erskine had said ‘among the first’ because he had already chosen the _actual_ first recipient and he had known that his benefactors wouldn’t agree.

Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter was, after all, a woman. And a _secretary_.

Peggy had first met Dr Erskine in 1939 while he was being lead through the Foreign Office typing pool at just the right moment to see _Miss_ Carter loose her temper with a colleague who had clearly been harassing her. Her put down had been creative, intelligent and lacking in fear.

A direct result of her outburst was to be severely reprimanded by her superior. Another direct result was Erskine giving her a chance to be _more_.

 

“Bucky –” and Steve has to stop to take in a shuddering breath and stare at the grubby ceiling for a moment before continuing. “Bucky is – _was –_ ” another shuddering breath. “Bucky was an adult. He… he made his choice. And he must have _damn well_ thought you were worth it.” Steve paused to look at her. “Just like I do, Peggy.”

Steve takes another shuddering breath.

“It was his choice, Peggy.”

“What? To _die_? Some choice that was.” Peggy’s voice was thready and high and laced with self-blame. She watched as a tear dropped from Steve’s chin, just to get lost in the fabric of his coat.

“No,” Steve said quietly. “To follow you, Peggy.” He was looking straight at her, eyes filled with tears and strength and admiration and Peggy saw again what Erskine saw; that Steve would have been the perfect person for his formula. And again Peggy wonders what Erskine saw in _her_ to make her top of his list regardless.

“If I were able,” he said, “I would have done the same in a heartbeat.”

And Peggy had to look away. Because she had got his best friend killed and he still looked at her like she was important.

 

Erskine was shot dead by a man called Heinz Kruger not two minutes after Peggy had successfully completed the super soldier serum. They had thought Kruger was simply a lab assistant of Erskine’s business partner and famed American industrialist James Edward Potts, but he turned out to be… more than that.

Erskine’s death narrowed down the amount of people Peggy trusted implicitly to one – herself. Or maybe one and a half, if you counted Potts, which she didn’t always.

However, Peggy quickly realised that the only person that looked at her the same way after the serum as they had before was Steve Rogers.

So she learnt to trust him, too.

 

“I don’t blame you for this.”

Peggy couldn’t help saying “Why not?” despite her better instincts.

Steve looked at her, his gaze steady and sad. “Because this is a war, Peggy. People will always… _die_ during a time of war.” He took a deep breath. “At least Bucky –” another breath “ _and_ you – are fighting for the right thing.”

Steve got up again.

“He wouldn’t have signed up if he didn’t think this was worth possibly dying for.”

Steve was already on his way to the door when Peggy said “I can’t even get drunk,” in a faintly petulant tone she would never admit to using _ever,_ if the situation was anything other than what it was.

Steve stopped and turned with a small sad smile on his face.

“And as you can imagine,” he said, “I have the lowest alcohol tolerance of anyone I’ve ever met.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Bucky used to say I could win awards.”

There was a short pause where Peggy couldn’t think of what to say, because Steve has brought up Bucky _again_ so clearly her diversionary tactic hadn’t worked, even if it had momentarily stopped Steve from leaving. But luckily he saved her from having to prove an adequate answer.

“I haven’t really seen London properly,” he said, “and Soho certainly looks… interesting. How do you feel about showing me around some?”

“It’s nine at night.”

“Are you telling me there's nothing interesting to see in London at night?”

Peggy looked down at her whiskey, and then back up at Steve, before gathering her coat, paying her tab and offering Steve her arm.

“Shall we, Mr Rogers?”

“Thank you, Miss Carter.”


End file.
